


Duty

by Hyarrowen



Category: Colditz (1972)
Genre: Angst, Gen, Obscure and British Commentfest
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-23
Updated: 2014-08-23
Packaged: 2018-02-14 08:00:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2184021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hyarrowen/pseuds/Hyarrowen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><em>He thought doing his duty scrupulously would save his honor, but after the war, he wonders...</em> </p><p>(kindkit's prompt in Obscure and British commentfest.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Duty

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kindkit](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kindkit/gifts).



The Kommandant had taken the oath to the Fuhrer. But within that oath, Karl had done what he saw as a higher duty: to act as an officer of the Wehrmacht should. And he'd succeeded for the most part: he'd kept all those turbulent boys safe in their grim castle, though now and then one would burrow or leap or play-act his way to freedom.

He had not succeeded in keeping his own boy safe.

Perhaps he might have done, though. For a year ago, when the Reich's end was clear, his cousin Stefan had approached him, one day when, providentially, they were both on leave. They strolled together in the woods that climbed away above Karl's house.

'Can you see a good way for this war to end, for us?'

Karl bent, stiffly, to gather early mushrooms that had formed a ring among last year's leaves, springing up from filaments that spread, far and silently, underground. 'Truly? Not unless we can persuade the Anglo-Americans that the Russians are the greater threat now.' He took off his hat, and piled the mushrooms into it. Lisa would be glad of them.

'Rommel is on the western front.' Stefan was not looking at Karl; his eyes were on the ground, as if searching for more mushrooms. Karl was fairly sure that he was seeing something else entirely. 'He's got such a reputation with the Anglo-Americans...'

'What can he do?'

'If he opened the front...' Stefan was speaking in a hurried whisper. 'If the Fuhrer were dead or incapacitated...'

'There would be no central authority. Would the High Command allow Rommel, of all people, to take control? There would be chaos – it's bad enough as it is -' The battered remnants of the last divisions struggling back from the east, his own son among them. And the oath, the oath. 'If we were all to do as we think best, it would be anarchy, and it would let the Russians in all the quicker. Do you remember Weimar?'

'Yes, I remember it,' sighed Stefan. 'Well, Karl, we're all on a tightrope, I know...' They turned back towards the house and breakfast, their shoes scuffing through the dead leaves, and did not speak on that subject again, nor did the Kommandant ever, even inadvertently, hint as to what was brewing.

Five months later, Rommel was dead, and the madman still alive and raging. The Kommandant had no notion where Stefan was. All he could do was hold Colditz Castle as securely as he could, keeping all those ridiculous, unruly boys safe, as he had not been able to keep his own Erich safe; and they in their turn kept safe the boys and old men who guarded them. They came through the fire together.

He had not broken his oath. But Karl wondered, after the war, when he finally found out what had happened to his cousin that autumn when the Reich consumed its own: what if he had taken the hints that Stefan had so carefully not spoken out loud? He, the old man, with so few years left to him – what if he had made himself the pivot on which history turned?


End file.
